An alternative for forming a traditional brick wall is a thin brick wall construction, where instead of stacking bricks on top of each other, a support panel is affixed to a front surface of a wall and then thinner bricks are mounted on the support panel. Grouting mortar may later be used to fill the gaps between thin bricks mounted on the support panel to create a façade similar to that of a traditional brick wall.
In a thin brick wall construction, thin bricks may be mounted on a support panel by adhesive materials. One problem with the use of adhesive materials for mounting thin bricks onto a support panel is that sometimes the adhesive may release and the thin bricks may fall off the support panel. Moreover, adhesive materials are expensive and they may sometimes cause unwanted smears on front surfaces of thin bricks.
Alternatively, thin bricks may be mounted on a support panel by mounting structures that are usually adapted for mounting specific thin bricks with specific shapes and sizes, which impose a lot of limitations on a user's choice of thin bricks. Moreover, these mounting structures provide only a limited number of mounting locations on the support panel and may require a large amount of force to mount the thin bricks on the support panel. Sometimes hammer strikes are required to mount the bricks on these mounting structures which may cause additional problems, such as breaking the thin bricks.
Therefore, there is a need for systems and methods for installing thin brick structures that allow for installing thin bricks on a wall without a need for adhesive materials or specific types of thin bricks with limited sizes and shapes. There is further a need for systems and methods for installing thin brick structures that provide an easier mounting mechanism for thin bricks, in which only a small amount of force is required to tightly mount thin bricks on a support panel.